I find it interesting that I rarely see the topic of dissociation discussed among people who are parenting traumatized adopted children. The reason this surprises me is that dissociation is one of the most talked-about topics on message boards for adult survivors of child abuse, and those traumatized people learned how to dissociate in childhood.

Dictionary.com defines dissociation as…

A psychological defense mechanism in which specific, anxiety-provoking thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations are separated from the rest of the psyche.

In layman’s terms, the traumatized child “checks out” in her own head. It is like the body is there, doing whatever it is supposed to be doing, but the essence of the child is “gone.”

A foster mother told me about how freaky she thought it was that her teenage foster daughter would be upset and then get this glassy look on her face. That is dissociation. Whatever was going on upset the traumatized child, so she “fled” from her body by dissociating the pain away.

I used to be a master at dissociation, and it has taken me a lot of work to stop dissociating whenever something upsets me. I freaked out a friend one time because I could not stop crying for over an hour. (I was trying not to dissociate and forcing myself to face the pain.) I finally decided that I did not want to cry anymore, so I dissociated. Immediately, I appeared to be completely fine. My friend said that she had never seen somebody go from being that upset to that “completely fine” so quickly.

The truth was that I was not completely fine. A part of myself was still very upset about the cause of my tears, but I chose to disconnect from that part of myself. I “checked out” in my own head.

Most traumatized adopted children have the ability to dissociate and use that ability frequently. The only traumatized people I have met who do not dissociate are those who are extremely hypervigilant. I used to think that a person had to do one or the other, but I came to realize that I did both. During the day, I would dissociate when my pain was triggered. At night, I was hypervigilant, awakening to the slightest sound.

On my next post for Trauma Thursday, I will discuss how to help a traumatized adopted child stop dissociating.

Related Topics:

• Trauma Tuesday: Traumatized Adopted Child Triggered by Location
• Continued Contact with Abusive Birth Parents after Adoption
• Why Can’t Foster Parents Use Corporal Punishment
• How to Stop Dissociation After Childhood Abuse
• Highway Hypnosis

Photo credit: JulieC